


Eli's Case

by grizzly_bear_bane



Category: Original Work
Genre: Budding serial killer, Child Abuse, Congenital analgesia, Gen, Hunting, Original Fiction, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, Revenge, Teen Angst, Thriller
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-02
Updated: 2013-02-02
Packaged: 2017-11-27 14:56:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/663300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grizzly_bear_bane/pseuds/grizzly_bear_bane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eli's always been an odd boy with a gift for extracting animal hearts after school - much to the horror of his parents.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In the Past

**Author's Note:**

> These are a series of character profiles and scenes from a longer piece.

**In the Past**

 

*

“In twenty years, I’ve never seen anything this bad, Frank,” Officer Stevenson sighed to his young partner. He scratched at his chin stubble and shook his head. “Nothing like this, not when kids are involved.”

“You think the kid might have done this? All this? I’m not seeing it… especially not in the condition he was in. Poor kid,” Officer Frank stated, looking around the current room they stood in, overwhelmed, as the lights from their police cars shined red and blue sparks of light throughout the opened window, highlighting the drying blood on every surface.

The overhead light was blown out and smashed; bits of the ceiling fan lay scattered on the sofa nearby. It was like a scene from a horror movie, blood and guts included, as red liquid matter covered the floor, chairs, the walls, television and ceiling. A steal baseball bat lay dropped in the corner.

“I don’t think that kid was strong enough to handle a bat that big, Stevie,” Frank muttered, still trying to bury his initial shock and nausea, even after being in the apartment for four hours assessing the scene of the crime.

“A bat didn’t do this. It may have started all this, but it wasn’t what ended it. That bat didn’t kill the victims. Look at the blood trail down the hall, and that splatter coming from the edge of that coffee table. And the splatters on the walls and carpet here. That blood came from a round of bullets exploding in the victims’ bodies and heads, Frank.”

“Victims,” Frank snorted. “You’re really calling those people victims, Stevie?”

“Not our place to judge them, Frank. Not yet, at least.”

“Not yet? Did you see that kid? He actually looks worse than this room.”

It was the truth. When police had been called to the small, shabby apartment, the child had been barely conscious, his naked body covered in blood as he huddled in the corner of the coat closet. He was clutching a gun with a vice grip like a cobra.

The blood on his body, the EMTs had stated, was dry, but the blood from his more private, internal wounds was almost as fresh as the blood on the walls. A cloth had been tied around his mouth; when removed, he never once uttered a noise or any words in response to the medical team’s gently asked questions. They assumed that he was mute from trauma and drove him off to the local hospital at once. His eyes seemed to be permanently glazed over with a blank stare focused near the floor. He had bruising on practically every inch of him, and scars on top of scars that told a story of a lifetime of terrible pain and suffering, of abuses both perverse and extreme.

The neighbors, who were interrogated within the hour of the police’s arrival, swore that they had no idea a child had even lived there with the man and his wife, who had both lived in this apartment for six years. The neighbors, and the family who leased the apartment, also had no idea of the couple’s criminal history either.

The woman was Cheryl Tanner, a convicted felon with a mental health record who spent most of her teenage life in prison for killing her firstborn and abandoning the second. Her husband, Richard Tanner, was a child sex offender with two strikes – all third-degree cases – who had served several years for theft, battery, and domestic violence as well. The Tanners had been suspected of robbery in another state six years ago. The stunned tenants told the police that the Tanners had given them double what they wanted for the apartment in cash, and they quickly sold the lease, feeling overwhelmed by the money offer and sympathetic to the couple that was expecting a child in the coming months. Now both Cheryl and Richard were being carried out in body bags and small envelops for the morgue to assess.

The police quickly understood the underlying relationship between the now deceased parents and their mute child. The Special Victims Unit for the county was called to take over the case. It was a grim reality, but a reality they were more than used to seeing come up in their report files. Yet the outcome, the scene that they were now witnessing, was still baffling, but all conclusions led to the child.

“Maybe I’m not cut out for field work after all, Stevie. I can’t stomach someone abusing their kid like this.  And I mean, I’ve read plenty of child rape and incest reports and I’ve seen the battered toddlers, but… This seems too unreal. And the murders? I can’t seem to wrap my head around a six-year-old being capable of this carnage. I mean… I mean he would have had to have shot them both, beat them with that bat and then follow them as they crawled from the bedroom to the kitchen, and to this living room, before finishing the job.” Officer Frank shook his head, dumbfounded. “A six year old… I just can’t…”

Stevenson nodded slowly. “I can. After all that kid’s been through and survived? I’d say he’s capable of almost anything.”

“Even this?”

“Especially this.”

“What do you think is going to happen to him?”

The officer was silence for a long while as he took another look around the small apartment space, thinking, searching for answers to a question that he didn’t have. Finally he shrugged. “No clue. But whatever happens to him, he won’t have an easy life, not with this hanging over his head, not if he still has a shred of a soul left him that’s still untouched by all this misery.”

 

* * *

 

“I want my file,” Eli said, his soft, crisp voice cutting through the melody of the soft classical music playing in the background. He pointed to the green folder on the edge of Dr. Moore’s desk, as he sat on the carpeted floor of the psychiatrist’s office plucking out the eyes of all the stock teddy bears that Dr. Moore used to pacify his child patients.

“The correct way of asking for it is, may I have my file please,” Dr. Moore scolded gently as he watched the seven-year-old destroy the animals.

Eli shivered involuntarily and suddenly ripped the arm off of the stuffed bear he was holding and looked up at the doctor sitting in the corner of the room. “May I have my files? Please,” he stated in his ever soft, monotone, lifeless way.

“No, Eli. You’re not old enough to have them. I’m sorry,” the doctor answered calmly. He watched carefully as Eli’s empty face grew animate in an indescribable way. Dr. Moore wanted to make note of it quickly, but waited for the boy to stop watching him first, which took an eerily long time. This patient was Dr. Moore’s most interesting, but he understood the danger of what lay beneath the child’s hollow eyes. It only took Eli’s first doctor a split second to look away before the boy had her pen stuck halfway down her throat. It was completely irresponsible to be distracted in Eli’s presence. A whole year into therapy and the boy still saw every living adult as a threatening target.

“May I see them?”

“No.” No one should see those files, not even the doctor himself, unless they wanted to be as severely haunted by the green folder’s contents.

Detailed evaluations chronicled the progress of the most notorious child patient in Saint Mary’s Hospital for Children’s psychiatric ward; even a note about a former nurse who claimed the child was the Devil. Medical reports, charts, and x-rays for trauma inflicted by others, now accompanied the reports and x-rays of the trauma Eli carelessly and repeatedly inflicted upon the other children before he was isolated, and now solely upon himself.

The doctor could still see the patterned and calculated constellation of scars on Eli’s skinny arms, cuts he’d made with a piece of wire he’d found in an attempt to feel pain like the other children did. He remembered when the head psychiatrist at the hospital was forced to ban the nurses from putting Eli in a straitjacket when the boy picked up a habit of breaking his own arms in a panic or dislocating his shoulders just to free himself from the restraints. 

“Why are you staring at me,” Eli asked in a quiet voice.

The doctor shrugged, “I’m just watching you, that’s all. Is that okay?”

“No.”

“Why not.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Does it make you feel uncomfortable to have people watch you?”

Eli didn’t respond.

“I see. Why does that make you uncomfortable, Eli,” the doctor pressed, quickly writing more notes.

Eli was silent, but it didn’t come from quietness or shyness; Eli had retreated into his mind, into memories he had difficulty understanding. In his head, his father was watching him one moment and on top of him in the next. Eli didn’t understand what his father did to him, couldn’t explain it with the small collection of words he knew, but he remembered the pain of the act. Torment so deep that his mind refused to process pain at all any more. He shivered and clutched at the mutilated teddy bear in that nervous, stressful silence until it passed. He looked at the doctor with hidden challenge and warning in his eyes. “I don’t like it.”

“I need to know why, Eli. Looking at other people is normal. It is a normal behavior like talking, touching—”

“If you touch me, I will do bad things to you,” Eli stated calmly.

“Like what? Will you hurt me like you hurt those other children? Like your parents, perhaps,” Dr. Moore asked cautiously, trying to understand the boy without pushing him too far. He needed this information. After a whole year, Eli still would not admit to killing his parents. It was the vital piece of information the doctor needed in order to know if Eli was really making positive, progressive steps towards normalcy and moral comprehension and a chance of being adopted into a suitable home.

“I didn’t do that.” The boy never took his eyes away from the doctor.

Dr. Moore sighed, “Okay, Eli. And I’m sorry for making you feel uncomfortable.” He shook his head and closed his notebook, accepting defeat.

Eli returned to picking out the teddy bear’s eyes, but his attention was still on the doctor.

“What are you doing Eli?”

“Playing.”

“That isn’t a good way to play. You’re hurting the teddy bears.”

“It’s how I play,” he shrugged. “Is that bad?”

“It’s destructive. Do you know what destructive means, Eli?”

A small, foreign smile edged its way onto Eli’s face, startling the doctor who had only ever seen the boy frown. “Yes. I know what that means. I like being destructive.”

 

* * *

 

“Eli?” It had become a routine, every Monday that her son did not have therapy to preoccupy himself with. Every time he made improvement, every new month that the problems would grow less and less, his doctors would give him more freedom, and it would always turn out to be a huge mistake.

For the first time in months, Martha was truly terrified. She knew that she should have stayed home with him today, that if left in the simple hands her husband, their nine-year-old son would wreck irreparable havoc.

She had been searching for her adopted son for three hours now; her husband Edward had been searching in his car around the neighboring fields and town for about four. Martha had resisted calling his various doctors, and had shuddered at even the thought of having to call the police again this month. She’d thought a long time ago that her and her husband had been prepared to take care of this child, but at this moment, she could only pray that he had not yet done the worst.

It began with their pets. They would buy a goldfish, a turtle, a hamster, and soon after they would go missing. The goldfish’s tiny scales had been plucked one by one, the turtle’s legs cut off and its body burned in a fire and buried in the backyard, and the hamster had yet to be found almost a year after its initial disappearance.

At first, Eli’s parents refused to believe that their son was responsible for such things, yet he thought nothing of it to profess his cruel actions to them with a smile and face the consequences that followed. But after they refused to buy him any more pets, the neighbors’ pets began to disappear as well. A cat’s tail was nailed to its owner’s front porch and the body dismembered in the backyard, a dog was found with its teeth pulled out and the fur seared. The following week, Eli gave his mother a necklace made of dog’s teeth. He was admitted to the children’s hospital the next day for a month-long stay and given a new set of doctors.

Putting him in the hospital only seemed to warp his perceptions even more.  He simply assumed that killing _owned_ animals was bad, but killing _free_ animals was not. And soon the neighborhood birds and squirrels were lain out like fallen leaves all over the street. His doctor’s explained that, with Eli’s past, this behavior was dangerous and often started with small animals and ended with people. They warned that it was a common serial killer trait.

Eli’s family packed up and moved to a different town in the following months to a more secluded home and requested even better, more thorough doctors and treatment. Here they could watch Eli continue to grow up into a more stable, healthy boy… or so they hoped.

It had been six months since his last hospital stay, and they hoped that Eli might have finally gotten better since then. He smiled and talked, and listened to his parents, even admired them. He was highly intelligent and caught on quickly, understood adult concepts that would have baffled any other adolescent. He was surprisingly strong for his small frame and was pleasant to look at with his lively bright eyes and large, uninhibited smile.

At first, none of his doctors and therapists expected him to amount to anything other than an unadoptable, numb, mute child, destined to be in asylums all his life, for all that he had experienced with his biological parents, but he soon surprised them all. Martha and her husband were severely proud of Eli for his accomplishments, though there were always problems. Problems that could be fixed here.

There were no distractions or temptations for Eli. No neighbors this time, just a small, private, wooded area with a strong, tall fence.

Which meant that Eli could not have possibly gone very far, yet he was still missing.

Along the fence in an area covered in thick bushes and tall grass, Martha’s heart sank. A slit was cut near the bottom and Edward’s heavy wire cutter lay in the grass nearby; blood stained the grass just on the other side of the fence.  Martha quickly called Edward as she hurried to the fence’s locked gate and rushed to the woods beyond.

A short way into the thin forest, she heard him humming to himself and called his name again.

“Eli, dear?” The singing stopped. “Can you come here? Mommy needs you, Eli. Where are you?”

She continued to walk towards where she had heard his voice, as he had become eerily quiet now. Her foot caught on a root and she stumbled into a small clearing. She stood there, unable to take in what she saw. She would have screamed if she remembered how, but at that moment, all she could do was look in terror.

Eli came from behind the large tree that had Martha’s attention. His arm was bleeding from being heavily scratched by the fence, but as always, what should have been very painful and a source of immediate attention, went completely unnoticed by Eli. “Don’t be mad at me, okay?” He asked cautiously. “I didn’t mean to break the fence but I couldn’t climb over it.”

Clarity soon returned to Martha as she processed the absurdity of the boy’s words. He was talking about the fence. He was worried about the fence, as if his arm wasn’t covered in blood. As if the bleeding deer he had been trying to string up on a low-lying tree limb did not exist.

Martha stared at the scene in awe. A small box was sitting at the base of the tree, its lid open. Inside, Martha could see the top of a heart. Only then did the large hole in the deer’s chest cavity register to her.

“Isn’t it pretty? I read Snow White two days ago and really like the part where the man was supposed to cut out her heart and it made me wonder what a real heart looked like. I was going to ask dad, but he wasn’t here.” He looked up at the deer again, a small smile tugging at his face. “When I took the heart out it just made me want to see what other organs looked like too.” He looked over at Martha and his face faltered. He tilted his head with confusion. “Mom? What’s wrong? Did I do something bad again? I wasn’t trying to hurt the deer, I promise. I was just curious, and… isn’t this kind of like what dad does to people in the hospital?” He walked closer to where his mother stood not saying a word. “I fed it cleaning supplies and bleach from under the kitchen sink so it would die first before I cut it, so it didn’t feel anything. I promise.” He took her hands and shook them gently. “Don’t be mad. I can’t be happy if you’re mad at me again. I don’t like it.”

Martha could feel the blood on her hands and Eli’s. She looked into his icy eyes and for a she moment wished they were still as dull as they had been when she and Edward first met him, when Eli was still fragile and unresponsive.

She screamed. She screamed loud enough for Edward to hear her from the backyard and she screamed until the police came to take Eli back to the hospital for his thirteenth stay.

 


	2. After Dark

**After Dark**

 

*

…after he felt that he had pacified them enough for the night, he excused himself to go outside for a walk.

He headed for the backyard.

Near the back of the house, Eli quietly retrieved his father’s large pail for gardening and filled it with water from the outdoor faucet. He carried the heavy bucket across the yard, farther away from the back porch lights and into the darkness at the end of their property and the start of the forest.

The grass was evenly cut near the back fence and it put Eli in a tense mood. He tried to recall when his father last decided to cut the grass all the way out this far to the end of the yard, but assumed his inattentive father wouldn’t have done that to spy and more than likely had no idea what to look for if he had been trying to snoop around here.

Eli looked around, making sure that he was alone, and crouched near the prickly bush in front of the fence. His fingers impatiently undid the false wire knots he’d placed on the parts of fence he’d cut a long time ago. The knots worked as a good enough cover-up for his secret opening. If only his parents trusted him enough to let him use the key for the fence door nearby, he wouldn’t have to destroy the fence. But then again, he thought about what he was doing _beyond_ the fence and understood why their distrust was all too necessary.

His fingers were cut by the rough edges of wire. He sighed, looking at the mess he was making; he was happy at least that he’d worn black pants as he wiped away the small drops of blood from his hands.

When he finished removing the knots he crawled underneath, pulling the bucket of water with him. He then sat on the other side of the fence to retie the knots, making sure no one would notice his secret door in the fence while he was away.

He trekked through the darkening woods with quiet footsteps, liking the feel of damp grass and dirt under his bare feet, enjoying the sounds of the night as he made his way towards the shed. He’d found it a few years back, hidden in the forest and in need of repair that he could not perform, but the old shed withstood his ministrations well enough. He loved it out here in the dense forest; it was private, and comfortable in its silence. Out here, so far away from the house and other humans, he could set his traps right outside the shed and his prey would come directly to him. He didn’t like hunting very much. This way was quite convenient.

The shed was now in sight in the bright light of the moon. Eli certainly took good care of his secret space. The wooden walls and tin roof were warped and overrun with grass and vines that he now kept maintained to a level where the building could be used but still look abandoned. Inside, he’d nailed heavy worn blankets to the walls and ceiling for better insulation, and covered the rotting floor in a thick layer of dirt for a more sufficient floor and for absorbing the blood of his projects easily.

Before he entered, he looked around again to make sure he was still alone. Quickly he went for the five locks hidden behind tangled vines and opened the double doors to his little sanctuary.

He could navigate the space in the dark; he was so familiar with its layout. On the left wall stood a table for his drawings, photographs of his past projects, medical and science books, jars, and various collections of objects he intended to study. On the right wall housed another table and shelves for his various tools; knives of different cuts and sizes, scissors, needles, chemicals, and more, all organized and set into precise, neat areas. On the back wall lay a spread of old pillows and blankets where he could sit and relax and think.  In the center of the room hung his latest project.

Eli found the lantern near the front doors and clicked it on. The dim light brought with it a surprise, something out of place in the midst of all Eli’s familiarities. The rattlesnake hissed, startled from the light. It lay coiled a pace or two in front of Eli’s bare feet, aiming to strike.

Eli frowned, glaring at the deadly animal and impatiently stomped over to his desk of tools. He hated intruders a little more than he hated most living things. And while he was surprisingly fond of snakes, this one wanted nothing more to take this space away from Eli, to make him run scared like any other human would.

In short order, he placed the heavy pail on the floor nearby and plucked the simplest knife from his collection and went for the snake with casual steps. He stepped on the snake’s neck near its head. With a practiced motion the snake’s head was quickly removed and tossed out of the opened doors. While the dying snake slithered and coiled under Eli’s foot he drew a cut from neck to tail and removed its beautiful skin.

It amazed him to see the remains of the snake still move, but he would be wasting time if he sat and watched any longer. He hung up the skin to dry on a nail on the left wall of the shed and then prepared one of his simple traps. With the trap and snake flesh in hand he went outside to the nearest tree and set it up, wrapping the meat around the thin rope that could easily snag whatever creature tried to get it.

Back inside his mood sunk even lower. It was clear from the faint yet growing smell that his project was beginning to decay. The weather was too warm, he’d let it hang for too long, and now it would be foolish to try and do anything but get rid of it. The large spot of blood on the dirt was black and as he neared the wolf, he noticed that small patches of the grey, black, and brown fur were falling out. He sighed and returned to the table for his gloves to remove the wolf from the shed, and for the map he’d made of burial plots around the grounds, to make sure he didn’t dig up any of his older projects.

It took most of the night to dig out the hole by himself and by the time it was covered over, he was exhausted, on top of being cranky and tense that the night had been ruined. All because of that class digging into his free time. If he didn’t want to make this mistake again, he would have to calculate a better timeframe for working out here.

He sat on the old pillows and cushions and reorganized his day-to-day plans, and made a mental note of getting new, clean blankets for this area. The pillows were becoming too worn for his comfort, and the blankets too dirty. He hated dirty things. Getting his hands dirty was one thing, but he hated sitting on dirty old blankets and pillows. It reminded him of things from the past that he wasn’t supposed to remember, that his therapists all assured his parents he could not remember; a tiny closet filled with dust, mold, and dirty blankets for his makeshift bed and the sound of heavy, determined footfalls making their way to his little closet. Eli snapped out of the memory and quickly rose from his spot and collected all the olds linens and tossed them outside. He covered them in medical alcohol and set them on fire right there in the depth of the trees, watching intently to make sure they burned completely.

The orange and red glow of the flames lit up the night and illuminated the forests in shadows and bright light. Eli felt the heat smother him in his close proximity, felt the uncomfortable warmth pulse through his clothing to his skin, mixing with the blood and dirt on his hands. The shadows and sweat felt like a nightmare, but one familiar and welcoming to him. Shadows and uncleanliness were conditions he understood, conditions ingrained in his mind and memory, but they were bad things, horrible things that made his doctors write horrible records about him, things that gave him real night terrors and upset his parents. It wasn’t a part of his life that was allowed anymore, hadn’t been for a very long time, yet here in the shadows he understood his condition better than anything else in the medically programmed world for which he had been conditioned and programmed.

As the fire burned out the brightness dimmed and the shadows enveloped the forest again, he rose from his spot in the dark feeling cold, clammy, and uncomfortably dirty and alone. He washed his hands and feet and emptied the pale of water over the last of the glowing embers.

He assessed his surroundings one more time. He would need to clean the shed, but that would have to wait for tomorrow. He was tired and dirty and needed to get clean again and very soon.

 

He showered and let his mind wonder as he sat on his bed, thinking about his rash actions tonight. What had driven him to burn those things? Those worn linens had been there forever, and yet tonight they had driven him into a near panic. His parents questioned him about the smell of smoke, but he didn’t give them any damning explanation this time. He was too angry with himself; he could have set the woods on fire and lost his precious little shed in the forest.


End file.
